Climate Audit Used for East Anglia Course

Maurizio (h/t Bishop Hill) spotted an email (2639 in 2009) describing extensive use of Climate Audit in a non-CRU East Anglia course:

Neil Adger has taken over the running of First Year course here in ENV. He asked Alan Kendall for the ppt for 2 lectures he gives. He sent them and 40 slides are taken from Climate Audit! A student asked Neil why Alan was saying things opposite to what Neil and Tim Osborn were saying!!!

23 Comments

“I did send one of the requests to Myles as it was from one of his fellow profs in Physics at Oxford! Myles knows him well and he has never talked about climate with Myles – or expressed any views. Myles can’t understand why he’s getting his climate education from Climate Audit and not from colleagues in his own dept!”

Bruce, the “fellow Prof in Physics at Oxford” would be me. I actually started my climate education at RealClimate, but I switched over here once it became clear that the science content was of higher quality.

Ok, thanks for clarifying that. When will the url to the agreements go online?

Best
Olive

On 09/08/2009, <P.Jones@xxxxx wrote:
Olive,
I did send some of the data to a person working
with Peter Webster at Georgia Tech. The email wasn't to
PW, but he was in the CC list. I don't know how
McIntyre found out, but I thought this was a personal
email. This was one of the first times I'd sent
some data to a fellow scientist who wasn't at the
Hadley Centre. As I said I have taken pity on African
and Asian PhD students who wanted some temperature and precipitation
data for their country. The email has only gotten me grief,
so this is another reason for being much less helpful to
people emailing CRU. This goes against my nature, but
I've been driven to it. You'd better not say this, otherwise
McIntyre will request the emails where to prove I've been
unhelpful!

I should have just said to the GA person – use GHCN, like I do to
everyone else.

I also don't see why I should help people, I don't want to work
with and who spend most of their time critisising me.

Years ago I did send much paleo data to McIntyre but have also
had nothing but criticism on his blog ever since. As I said,
this criticism on blog sites is not the way to do science.
If they want to engage, they have to converse in civil tones,
and if people don't want to work with them, they have to respect
that and live with it.

Cheers
Phil

Hi Phil,

Thanks so much for that. I have one other question: McIntyre claims
that you sent data to Peter Webstre at Georgia Tech, but that you
would not supply him with the same data. Is that true, and if so, what
was the reasoning?

Best,
Olive

On 07/08/2009, Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxx wrote:
Here it is. There will be a link to the agreements – which are
attached.
Files won't go up with these names. You should recognize one of these
– the data agreement between the Met Office and NERC.

Met Services appear want to be able to sell data commercially.
As I said some has more value than other types of data. Most
put in clauses separating academic from commercial use.

In 1788.txt, a journalist from ITV asks PJ if there is anyone to counter the view of David Viner (the guy who said “children aren’t going to know what snow is”). PJ declares that there’s nobody at UEA who dissents from the doctrine. OK, that was 2004, but presumably Alan Kendall was there then, not to mention Paul Dennis.

Mick Kelly wrote:
“That’s amazing re Alan Kendall (always thought he was rather a loose
cannon)… I’d call his bluff and constructively suggest that he might ensure consistency between what you say (assuming you give the lectures I used to cover?) and his account – for the students’ sake at least! Alternatively, could always threaten to have Greenpeace invade his lecture Good luck! Kind of ironic that I used to invoke academic freedom when criticised by ENV for ‘promoting’ concern about global warming and I suspect Alan might respond in a similar fashion.”

It’s worth reading the lengthy comments by ‘John’ at Bishop Hill on Alan Kendal. He seems to me to have been the victim of another example of bullying by ‘The Team’. There are clear and determined efforts to pull rank by Jones in order to shut Kendal up. ‘Fortunately’ (Jones’s word) Kendal is to retire soon (he says). Sickening.

Earlier on in that message, PJ says “I have stopped sending data out to anybody after the stupid comment on Climate Audit by Peter Webster“. It’s Sep 25, 2009 and the only possibly related thing I can find is the Jul 24 post

I’ve distilled Kendall’s story from 1999 to 2009 here. I think it is highly revealing, both of what Team members complain that the emails lack, ie context; and of the shadiness of omitting the key witnesses Steve McIntyre, Willis Eschenbach and Douglas Kenyon at the Oxburgh and Muir Russell “enquiries”.